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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Banning Airtel Dish

Some powerful forces in the Maldives are lobbying for a ban on Airtel dish antennas. We would like to believe that such forces are motivated by purely altruistic reasons such as protecting our culture and religion. However there are reasons to believe that it goes a bit beyond this.

The Airtel package is an India-based service that offers a large number of channels for the price of $100 per year, which works out to about Rf 100 per month. The cable packages hitherto available in the Maldives are priced at between Rf 300 and Rf 500. With this price difference Airtel dishes are appearing on Male rooftops at a rapid rate.

A few years back, the then Information Minister Nasheed had made an attempt to negotiate with local cable operators to bring down the prices. This attempt was blocked by the same lobbies, which today are gunning for Airtel.

To what extent our culture (or the lack there of) and religion (including our blatant disregard of its tenets) will be affected by the Airtel package is open to debate. But one thing is certain. Religious programs and pornographic material have been widely available in the Maldives for quite some time through imported CDs, video cassettes and radio, even before the appearance of dish antennas and the internet. If we are to close all these avenues we might as well get a time machine and transport us back to Stone Age.

Read this article on Haveeru and you will find out that the story about God Tv is a well scripted drama to put pressure on the Islamic Ministry. http://www.haveeru.com.mv/?page=details&cat=&tbl=online&id=84719

Here a guy from Bnet saying the only way we can stop Airtel is 'raising the religious issue'. And the ministry officials who happen to be from stone age took the bait. Like they banned dancing for Maldivians they came out to ban Airtel dish. If these guys stay in the government for too long they will take away our phones and computers as well. Dj. Majeed has already issued a fatwa on profits made by selling alcohol and pork. Soon we will have to ban non-Muslims coming to Maldives or Maldivians traveling abroad. These guys dont know that even when we live in non-Muslim countries where alcohol, pronography, bibles and churches we do not convert to other religions.

"The killing has dominated Egyptian media for days, while it has received comparatively little coverage in German and Western media.

A German Muslim group criticized government officials and the media for not paying enough attention to the crime.

"The incident in Dresden had anti-Islamic motives. So far, the reactions from politicians and media have been incomprehensibly meager," Aiman Mazyek, the general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims, told Berlin's Tagesspiegel daily.

Egyptian commentators said the incident was an example of how hate crimes against Muslims are overlooked in comparison to those committed by Muslims against Westerners. Many commentators pointed to the uproar that followed the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-born Islamic fundamentalist angry over one of his films criticizing the treatment of Muslim women.

Abdel Azeem Hamad, chief editor of the independent Egyptian daily el-Shorouk, said that if the victim had been a Jew, there would have been an uproar.

"What we demand is just some attention to be given to the killing of a young innocent mother on the hands of fanatic extremist," he wrote in his column.

An Egyptian blogger Hicham Maged, wrote "let us play the 'What If' game."

"Just imagine if the situation was reversed and the victim was a Westerner who was stabbed anywhere in the world or — God forbid — in any Middle Eastern country by Muslim extremists," he said.

The Egyptian Pharmacists' Association called for a boycott of German drugs. The victim was a pharmacist."

BREAKING NEWS.Islamic Ministry is very concerned people watch Pornographic material on television.The solution is ban the import of this thing called television set.They are also concerned that porn sites can be accessed using mobile telephone, Will they also ban mobile fones and computers,too? I wonder.

Dhiraagu's Broadband Marathon will be held on Friday (July 10) afternoon. If you think Dhiraagu is ripping us off with their high internet prices and low bandwidth, organise a small protest where the marathon is held. Demand to reduce the internet prices and ask Dhiraagu to offer better packages. Be there with some placards. Internet Aiy Foraa Fashah Agu Heyo Kurey!

this medianet people think they have all the rights over the maldives within this,entertainment channels, if the government is to produce another company to franchise with airtell i'm sure medianet and bnet will be among them, then we will no longer get these channels in Aiy foruvey agehga, why don't the goverment focus on other problems which the people of male' is suffering, are we eating the healthy fish bying from the fishmarket, who cares... then health ministry wil anounce eat helthee food, bye helthee food, where can we find this, hey, Adaalat peoople, u will be responsible for all these things.